For the past several years, I have focused on researching the intersection of race and public policy. Though the country is very divided, I believe President Trump’s victory opens to door for resolving troubling racial issues, provided that Republicans and conservatives are smart about engaging with African-Americans and other racial minorities. I explored this question at Salon:

During his farewell speech last week in Chicago, President Obama said that “race relations are better than they were 10, or 20, or 30 years ago, no matter what some folks say. You can see it not just in statistics, you see it in the attitudes of young Americans across the political spectrum.”

While Obama’s electoral victories themselves were an important chapter in the advancement of race relations in America, especially poignant during the week that we celebrate the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., it’s worth noting that the president’s assessment doesn’t match polling evidence from Gallup that shows a steep erosion of race relations in America, worse than at any point under George W. Bush, beginning with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement. This erosion was felt by both black and white Americans.

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Carrie Sheffield is the founder of Bold. She is passionate about storytelling to empower and connect others. A founding POLITICO reporter, Carrie contributed on political economy at Forbes and wrote editorials for The Washington Times. After earning a master’s in public policy from Harvard University, she managed credit risk at Goldman Sachs and researched for American Enterprise Institute scholar Edward Conard. She earned a B.A. in communications at Brigham Young University and completed a Fulbright fellowship in Berlin.